If you’ve been following my personal accounts on Buzz or Twitter, I’ve been talking about how I am absolutely addicted to Yeasayer’s new album. I didn’t care for their first one. I listened to it once and never felt like listening to it again. I thought 2080 was a good song, and included it on one of my mixtapes but I didn’t care enough for any of it to post anything about it here. My main problem with it was that it struck me as boring (I hardly remember any of it) and the “world music” pastiche seemed incredibly insincere, like I was listening to a group of kids trying to emulate Peter Gabriel if Peter Gabriel was influenced strongly XTC, and they were failing horribly at it.

Luckily, Odd Blood strikes me very differently. This is a beautiful album. It covers such a broad range of emotions that it’s hard for me not to get sucked in (and Pitchfork saying “Their lyrics may not say much of anything…” are way off base) because they cover a lot of things I’ve experienced simply in the last year or two.

Ambling Alp, the song everyone has probably heard and if you haven’t then you should, with its inspirational father-to-son chorus (“You must stick up for yourself, son, never mind what anybody else done!”) hits me right where it counts, because my father never bothered to say anything like this at all to me. I was never taught to stick up for myself. Whenever I did, I got in trouble at school, and then I got yelled at and scared by my parents. The one time my dad saw me getting picked on, he yelled at the kid himself, and when that kids father got in his face, he walked away without even trying to explain himself… which was the bigger thing to do, I realize, but at the time it just made me feel sad. “My dad’s willing to stick up for me as long as he’s doing it by shouting at someone a fourth of his age.” What would my life had been like if I had a father that made me feel like I had no choice but to defend myself, and that walking away from your problems the second the going gets tough isn’t actually the right solution?

Madder Red, about how it’s hard to feel like you’re worth loving when you feel like a spineless coward and what it is like to spend a lot of your time in a relationship wondering when your lover will tell you the truth that is so obvious to you: that you’re not worth loving. I Remember is about remembering what it is like to be in stupid love with someone. O.N.E. communicates the feeling of being in denial about loving with someone you can’t have anymore because you couldn’t control yourself and had to be with other people and won’t admit it could have been any other way. Love Me Girl, the other side of that situation, where you’ve damaged yourself by behaving so badly that you can’t imagine the person you love isn’t the same way you once were or are, destroying any chance you had at trusting them.

Supporting all these songs is music that is emotional and jaw-droppingly beautiful. Pitchfork, again, is way off the mark by saying these songs need editing, because they don’t. If being lushly layered with instrumentation and effects in order to heighten the emotionality of a song is what they mean by “need editing” then, sure, I agree with them. Every song on this album is meant to be turned up loud, danced to, and allowed to fill you with joy. Maybe I am crazy, and maybe the fact that I am on my tenth listen in three days makes me seem a little fanatical, but I just can’t get enough of this stuff. There is just so much going on that each listen reveals more layers that I missed the first time around. Is it overwhelming? No.

I am posting Rome, not even the best song on the album (and it has nothing to do with the rest of it, being basically “watch the fuck out ’cause I’m gonna fuck shit up” song), because it makes me want to dance more than any other song on the album. For some reason the rhythm of it reminds me of black girls dancing, specifically a loop of a couple of teenage black girls dancing that I saw on a screen behind Bobby Birdman during his live show. Rome makes me want to shake my shoulders back and forth, surging forward and jumping backward, leading with those possessed shoulders. I know nothing about dancing—I am just an awkward white guy after all with no natural rhythm of my own—but this song makes me want to stand up and make a fool of myself, even when I am here at work.

Instead, I’ll probably just turn it up loudly at some point this weekend while I am home alone and dance by myself, alone in my room, because that is what self-conscious people do when no one else is around. Maybe that is the best compliment I can give Yeasayer’s Odd Blood: it makes me want to dance around in my room like a teenage girl when no one is around.

Site Note: Yesterday when I said Ryan would be posting today I was lying.

I saw Bobby Birdman open for YACHT when I saw them in San Diego last year but I didn’t write anything about him because he struck me the same way most opening acts do: largely forgettable. The funny thing is, though, that I wasn’t able to forget him at all. In fact, I’d say I’ve probably thought of him once a week over the last four months since. I didn’t think much of it, though, because his live act was interesting even if I only vaguely remember the details.

Much like YACHT, Bobby Birdman’s live act consists of his laptop, a projector, and himself standing alone on stage dancing and singing while his music plays out of his laptop and projects interesting videos on the wall. When he started, he started talking about himself and asking the audience questions, and if I remember correctly he kept repeating himself, kind of in time with the music, and repeating what I can’t remember, but it was all very odd. I stood in the back of the crowd and was smiling the whole time, novelty usually floors me and this guy was definitely novel. It seemed like he kept staring into my eyes, but I usually always think all performers are constantly making direct eye contact with me because I am usually taller and odder looking than anyone else in the crowd.

When he started into his songs, he started dancing in a way that is probably all his own. He’s got “awkward white guy” down pat, but he owns his awkwardness with confidence, and I can appreciate that. His video loops accompanying his dancing are also kind of awkward, with looped clips of people dancing, 50′s diner waitresses from old commercials shaking around, and kaleidoscopic patterns abound.

After a couple songs, which had interestingly danceable beats and definitely made me want to do an awkward white guy dance of my own, his material started to get kind of boring. At the time I figured, “Oh, just another lousy opening act, let’s just go sit down,” and that’s what me and my friend did. We walked away and sat down a good distance from the stage and mostly tuned out what was going on. I appreciated this guys courage and commitment to his craft, as I myself couldn’t imagine standing in front of a group of college students dancing awkwardly to my music that no one seems to be responding to without running off the stage with tears streaming down my cheeks, but over all I felt pretty meh about his whole routine.

That was until I heard Yeasayer‘s new album and the song Rome reminded me so strongly of Bobby Birdman that I just had to buy his latest album.

…and for the most part I am glad I did.

Bobby Birdman has little to no concern for hooks. Normally this sort of thing makes me want to tear into an album: I mean, come on, what is music without hooks? If I don’t want to sing along with it, why am I going to want to listen to it? Maybe Mr. Birdman can write hooks and he just doesn’t care to, or maybe his mind just doesn’t work that way and this is the music that exists in his heart, and based on the quality of the music on New Moods, I’m inclined to believe it is the latter.

Instead of hooks, Birdman trades on interesting beats that make you want to dance, or at least think about trying to dance to them, even if you don’t really know how. When the songs lack awesome beats, which starts a little after this song on the album, he starts to make you feel like this would be a good album to fall asleep to. The lack of hooks and the lack of lively instrumentation combine into something that is so relaxing that I am pretty sure driving late at night while I was tired the first time I listened to this album was probably hazardous.

Do I like the album? Kind of. I don’t tend to like music that makes me want to fall asleep, unless I am looking to fall asleep. If I was to judge the album by the amount of songs on it that I think I will listen to from this point onward, there’s maybe three or four. Other stand out tracks include Only For A While, Bloody Mess, and Weighty Wait.

The best thing I can say about Bobby Birdman is that I am looking forward to seeing him open for YACHT again come March 26th when they will be playing at the Echoplex here in LA. If you want to see a really interesting live show that is mostly entirely unlike anything else you’ll stumble upon, see YACHT when they come around, and as an added bonus you’ll get to see Bobby Birdman.

Site Note: You might notice that some things have changed around here. Tomorrow there will be a post by a new writer on the site, a young gentleman by the name of Ryan. He’s got different taste than I do, and if you don’t like it, just ignore him, or berate him in the comments on his posts. For the sake of easily identifying that he and I are two different people, my posts will appear in red from now on, and his will appear in blue. If the colors aren’t clear enough on your screen, post a comment tomorrow and let me know. If anything looks funny on the site, I’ll fix it eventually.